WEBVTT NOTE Preface 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.800 Preface 2 00:00:01.800 --> 00:00:07.600 All of my work has revolved around the central question of human liberty, for it has been 3 00:00:07.600 --> 00:00:13.680 my conviction that while each discipline has its own autonomy and integrity, in the final 4 00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:19.960 analysis all sciences and disciplines of human action are interrelated and can be integrated 5 00:00:19.960 --> 00:00:24.760 into a science or discipline of individual liberty. 6 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:32.800 In particular, my Man Economy and State, two volumes, 1962, set forth a comprehensive analysis 7 00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:39.640 of the free market economy, while the analysis was praxeologic and value free and no political 8 00:00:39.640 --> 00:00:42.480 conclusions were directly upheld. 9 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:48.160 The great virtues of the free market and the evils of coercive intervention into that market 10 00:00:48.160 --> 00:00:51.240 were evident to the discerning reader. 11 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:57.640 The sequel to that work, Power and Market, 1970, carried the analysis of man, economy 12 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:00.520 and state further in several ways. 13 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:07.180 A, a systematic analysis of the types of government intervention in the economy clearly shows 14 00:01:07.180 --> 00:01:11.640 the myriad of unfortunate consequences of such intervention. 15 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:18.260 B, for the first time in modern political-economic literature, a model was outlined of the way 16 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:25.180 The way in which a totally stateless and therefore purely free or anarchistic market economy 17 00:01:25.180 --> 00:01:27.820 could function successfully. 18 00:01:27.820 --> 00:01:28.820 And c. 19 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:35.320 A praxeological and therefore still value-free critique was conducted of the lack of meaningfulness 20 00:01:35.320 --> 00:01:41.220 and consistency of various types of ethical attacks on the free market. 21 00:01:41.220 --> 00:01:46.640 The latter section moved from pure economics to ethical criticism, but it remained within 22 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:52.860 in the Bounds of Value-Freedom and thus did not attempt a positive ethical theory of individual 23 00:01:52.860 --> 00:01:54.440 liberty. 24 00:01:54.440 --> 00:02:00.400 Yet I was conscious that the latter task needed almost desperately to be done, for, as will 25 00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:06.940 be seen further in this work, I at no time believed that value-free analysis or economics 26 00:02:06.940 --> 00:02:13.840 or utilitarianism, the standard social philosophy of economists, can ever suffice to establish 27 00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:16.900 to establish the case for liberty. 28 00:02:16.900 --> 00:02:21.840 Economics can help supply much of the data for a libertarian position, but it cannot 29 00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:26.060 establish that political philosophy itself. 30 00:02:26.060 --> 00:02:29.880 Political judgments are necessarily value judgments. 31 00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:35.880 Political philosophy is therefore necessarily ethical, and hence a positive ethical system 32 00:02:35.880 --> 00:02:41.260 must be set forth to establish the case for individual liberty. 33 00:02:41.260 --> 00:02:47.500 It was furthermore clear to me that no one was engaged in trying to fill this crying need. 34 00:02:47.500 --> 00:02:53.020 For one thing, until very recently in this century, there have been virtually no libertarian 35 00:02:53.020 --> 00:02:59.420 political philosophers, and even in the far more libertarian 19th century, only Herbert 36 00:02:59.420 --> 00:03:07.980 Spencer's great Social Statics, 1851, set forth a thorough and systematic theory of liberty. 37 00:03:07.980 --> 00:03:14.340 In For a New Liberty, 1973, I was able for the first time to put forward at least the 38 00:03:14.340 --> 00:03:21.460 brief outlines of my theory of liberty, and also to expound and defend the anarcho-capitalist 39 00:03:21.460 --> 00:03:27.100 political creed far more substantially than in power and market. 40 00:03:27.100 --> 00:03:32.140 But For a New Liberty was more popular than scholarly, and it concentrated mainly on the 41 00:03:32.140 --> 00:03:37.620 application of the libertarian creed to the important social and economic problem areas 42 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:45.780 in American Society, the great need for a systematic theory of liberty still remained. 43 00:03:45.780 --> 00:03:51.380 The present work attempts to fill this gap, to set forth a systematic ethical theory of 44 00:03:51.380 --> 00:03:58.900 liberty. It is not, however, a work in ethics per se, but only in that subset of ethics 45 00:03:58.900 --> 00:04:05.420 devoted to political philosophy. Hence it does not try to prove or establish the ethics 46 00:04:05.420 --> 00:04:35.260 Part Two is the substance of the work itself, setting forth my theory of liberty. 47 00:04:35.260 --> 00:04:40.820 It begins, as the best economic treatises have done, with a Crusoe world, except that 48 00:04:40.820 --> 00:04:46.780 the condition and actions of Crusoe are here analyzed not in order to establish economic 49 00:04:46.780 --> 00:04:53.340 concepts, but rather those of natural rights morality, in particular of the natural sphere 50 00:04:53.340 --> 00:04:57.980 of property and ownership, the foundation of liberty. 51 00:04:57.980 --> 00:05:03.660 The Crusoe model enables one to analyze the action of man vis-à-vis the external world 52 00:05:03.660 --> 00:05:15.580 The Key to the Theory of Liberty is the establishment of the rights of private property. 53 00:05:15.580 --> 00:05:21.460 For each individual's justified sphere of free action can only be set forth if his rights 54 00:05:21.460 --> 00:05:25.580 of property are analyzed and established. 55 00:05:25.580 --> 00:05:31.700 Crime can then be defined and properly analyzed as a violent invasion or aggression against 56 00:05:31.700 --> 00:05:38.060 the just property of another individual, including his property and his own person. 57 00:05:38.060 --> 00:05:44.020 The positive theory of liberty then becomes an analysis of what can be considered property 58 00:05:44.020 --> 00:05:48.880 rights, and therefore what can be considered crimes. 59 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:54.040 Various difficult but vitally important problems can then be dissected, including the rights 60 00:05:54.040 --> 00:05:59.880 of children, the proper theory of contracts as transfers of property titles, the thorny 61 00:05:59.880 --> 00:06:04.440 Many Questions of Enforcement and Punishment, and Many Others. 62 00:06:04.440 --> 00:06:09.840 Since questions of property and crime are essentially legal questions, our theory of 63 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:16.780 liberty necessarily sets forth an ethical theory of what law concretely should be. 64 00:06:16.780 --> 00:06:24.240 In short, as a natural law theory should properly do, it sets forth a normative theory of law. 65 00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:28.280 In our case, a theory of libertarian law. 66 00:06:28.280 --> 00:06:33.620 While the book establishes the general outlines of a system of libertarian law, however, 67 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:39.960 it is only an outline, a prolegomenon to what I hope will be a fully developed libertarian 68 00:06:39.960 --> 00:06:42.760 law code of the future. 69 00:06:42.760 --> 00:06:48.160 Hopefully libertarian jurists and legal theorists will arise to hammer out the system of libertarian 70 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:54.720 law in detail, for such a law code will be necessary to the truly successful functioning 71 00:06:54.720 --> 00:07:00.080 of what we may hope will be the libertarian society of the future. 72 00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:05.240 The focus of this work is on the positive ethical theory of liberty and of the outlines 73 00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:07.560 of libertarian law. 74 00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:13.600 For such a discussion, there is no need for a detailed analysis or critique of the state. 75 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:19.760 Part 3 briefly sets forth my view of the state as the inherent enemy of liberty, and indeed 76 00:07:19.760 --> 00:07:22.200 of genuine law. 77 00:07:22.200 --> 00:07:27.320 Part 4 deals with the most important modern theories which attempt to establish a political 78 00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:34.080 philosophy of liberty, in particular those of Mises, Hayek, Berlin and Nozick. 79 00:07:34.080 --> 00:07:39.240 I do not attempt to review their works in detail, but rather to concentrate on why I 80 00:07:39.240 --> 00:07:44.680 think their theories fail at the task of establishing an ideology of liberty. 81 00:07:44.680 --> 00:07:51.620 Finally, Part 5 attempts the virtually pioneering task of beginning to set forth a theory of 82 00:07:51.620 --> 00:07:57.700 of strategy of how to move from the present system to a world of liberty, and also my 83 00:07:57.700 --> 00:08:03.360 reasons for being highly optimistic about the long run and even short run prospects 84 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:09.820 for the achievement of the noble ideal of a libertarian society, particularly in America.